realmofadventurefandomcom-20200216-history
Commoners economy
If you have been on these boards long enough, you have seen (if not made) posts that decry the D&D economy as being "broken" because the poor, poor commoners could never afford anything because they only make 1 silver a day, and everything is just so terribly expensive, etc etc etc, right? The only problem is that it just isn't true. The commoners make more than enough money to get by on, and even make enough money to save it for expensive purchases. The following article will focus on the misconceptions of how the rules work, and will show an example of a "standard" commoner family, how much money said family makes in a week, and how much money they use in a week. But, before we get into that, the linch pin in the "it’s broken!" argument is that commoners only make 1 sp a day. In the majority of cases, I argue that this is not true. The 1 sp a day salary is for completely unskilled, clueless laborers. The ditch diggers or migrant day laborer types. This is not what the majority of commoners will be. Let’s look at the Commoner entry in the DMG, paying special attention to their skillpoints. They get 2 skillpoints per level, with the standard x4 at level 1. Now look at their class skills, and you'll notice that they have both Craft and Profession. On top of this, like any other class, they get a feat at first level. For the purposes of this article, the commoners in question will be assumed to have 8 skillpoints and 1 feat to spend. Obviously, humans will have 9 points and 2 feats, but I'm going to work it as a generic so that it applies to everyone. We can assume the humans spend their extra point and feat on personal things that don't contribute to their overall ability to survive day to day life (like a rank or two in Knowledge Local). Now then, let us assume that the typical commoner family consists of 5 individuals; a mother, a father, a teenage son, a child daughter, and a baby. Joe Commoner lives in a small village, and has a small farm out by the woods. He built the main house himself, with help from his father as a youth when he was old enough to move out on his own. They used wood harvested from the nearby forest, and did the work themselves, meaning the house was essentially free. Joe learned how to farm from his father, and has been a farmer for as long as he can remember. Mechanically, Joe is in his mid 30's, and is a 2nd level commoner. He's not as fit as he was in his younger days, but he's a little wiser. We will still assume that he has a +0 modifier to all of his stats though. Jill Commoner is Joe's wife. She helps her husband with the farming by working in the fields part of the day, and also does the cooking, cleaning, and mending of clothes, as well as watching after the children. Mechanically, she is a first level commoner, also with +0 mods to all of her stats. Billy Commoner is Joe's oldest child, a 15 year old boy that grew up much the same as Joe did, and will soon be old enough to start his own family, but for now is still helping dad around the family farm. Billy is a first level commoner with +0 stat mods. Susy Commoner is the middle child, and helps her mother with the household chores. Susy is a 0th level commoner, and has only 2 skillpoints. Baby Commoner is a baby, and gurgles a lot, but is too young to provide any meaningful contribution to the family's financial situation. --- As a D&D character, Joe has maxxed out his ranks in Profession (Farmer), and has also taken Skill Focus (Farming), for a total of +8 to his skill checks. He also has 3 ranks in Craft (Woodworking), and 2 ranks in Knowledge (Local). Jill Commoner has 2 ranks in Profession (Farmer), 2 ranks in Profession (Cook), 2 ranks in Craft (Clothing), and 2 ranks in Heal (for all the family's normal ailments). Billy Commoner has 3 ranks in Profession (Farmer) that he learned from his father, Martial Weapon Proficiency (longbow), 2 ranks in Survival (he uses his bow to go hunting in the nearby woods), 2 ranks in Craft (woodworking), and 1 rank in Knowledge (Local). Susy Commoner is too young to do much, but has 1 rank in both Profession (Cooking) and Craft (Clothing). --- Joe Commoner takes 10 on his Profession (Farmer) check, for a total of 18. Jill and Billy both use Aid Other to help Joe with his check. Jill has a 60% chance of getting her Aid Other to succeed, while Billy has a 65% chance of succeeding. We'll be a bit conservative and say that, on average, one of them succeeds in giving Joe +2 to his checks, for a total of 20. Since you earn half your check in gold per week, this means the family has a weekly income of 10 gp, which is substantially better than the 21 sp (or 2.1 gp) they would have gotten as unskilled labor. The other skill ranks for the other family members do not factor into weekly income, and serve only to round them out and allow them to do things like carve their own wooden bowls, make their own clothes, etc. --- We will assume that Joe, Jill, and Billy each eat the equivalent of 1 common meal and 2 poor meals per day (5 sp per day, each), and that Susy eats the equivalent of 2 poor meals per day (2 sp per day), and that the baby does not eat enough to be worth factoring into this. That means they eat, on average, 1.7 gp of food per day, as a family, for a total of 11.9 gp worth of food per week. Whoops, that’s too much, as they only make 10 gp a week, right? Wrong, that’s the price for if you are buying your meals from someone else. Jill and Susy both have Profession (Cook) and make their own meals out of what they grow on the farm, plus whatever meat Billy brings home from when he goes hunting, meaning they are crafting their own meals, which means they pay half price, or 5.95 gp per week for food. Let’s also assume that once per week Joe heads down to the village tavern for a mug of ale with the neighbors for 4 coppers, which brings it up to 5.99 gp per week. So, the Commoner family is making 10 gp per week, on average, consuming 6 gp a week in food. That leaves 4 gp per week that can be spent on things like raw cloth for sewing clothes out of, assorted metal tools and implements from the blacksmith, or just squirreled away for a rainy day. We'll assume there are 50 weeks a year (with a total of two weeks off for holidays and the like), that means our Commoner family can save upwards of 200 gp per year for luxuries, or the gods forbid, healing potions for injuries or sicknesses that are too severe for Jill to handle with her Heal skill. Even without Aid Other, Joe would have a Take 10 check of 18 with his farming, meaning they would only lose out on 1 gp per week, which would still let him feed his family the same food, provide the same living conditions, and still be able to put away upwards of 150 gp per year, probably more because that would free Billy up to go hunting and gathering in the forest more often, meaning the weekly food bill would go down as well. And, with that much money available per year, it is not a stretch of the imagination in any way to think that Joe could hire some help to expand his farm, upgrade his house, buy better equipment, and potentially get the equivalent of masterwork farming tools for another +2 to his checks so he can make even more money. --- Now, in closing, it should be said that the idea of them having this much money does not necessarily mean they actually ever see that much actual coin. Joe and his family are capable of outputting 10 gp worth of produce per week, and consuming 6 gp worth of goods per week. It is almost guaranteed that most of the food money is actually coming out of what they grow (so they grow 10 gp worth of food, then turn around and eat 6 gp worth of it every week), and that anything else they get from others in the village is in the form of barter (2 bags of potatoes for that new hoe, for example). So, while this commoner family may not have much money, they are in no way destitute, and are quite capable of living very comfortable lives, without the need to overall the entire D&D economy just to make it more "realistic" for them. Aid Another might not be the most efficient thing to do, here. Realistically, they might each be working on a separate profession skill. Joe tends to the crops and animals with Profession: Farming, Jill could sell baked goods with Profession: Cook or work as a seamstress with Craft: Clothes, Billy could use Profession: Hunting or Farming to assist, even little Susy could craft trinkets or bake cookies to sell. If Joe, Jill, Billy, and Susy each make separate Profession Checks, all taking 10, then Joe gets 18, Billy 13, Jill 12, and Susy 11 - that's 9, 6, 6, and 5 gold, for a total of 26 GP a week. Now if they work 50 weeks of the year they're producing a cool 1,300 GP per year. They could get 2 Common and 1 Good meal per day for ~15 GP and still have 550 GP left at the end of the year. If they live on Poor/Common meals as you suggest, and pay 1/3 of their gross income in taxes, they still have ~500 GP left at the end of the year for equipment. That's enough for several Horses, a Dog, etc. A Cart/Wagon/Carriage, maybe new plow, not to mention some Masterwork Tools (each providing an extra 50 GP/Year). Investment in extra labor - even unskilled - should always pay for itself, making at least 5 GP a week at the cost of 7-21 SP. Historical Let us look at the historical acre. It was roughly defined as the amount of land one man and one ox could plow in one day. Typically, it also meant the amount of land that would allow 1 person to exist at subsistence level. It is now defined as 43,560 sq ft. That works out to roughly 121’x 360’. For reference, the NCAA standard soccer field ‘optimum’ is 75 yards by 120 yards, or 225’x360’. Taking the medieval assumption of 1 man day per acre, let us assume your family has a 20 acre spread. 9 acres for wheat production, 9 fallow acres for grazing, and 2 acres for a personal garden, barns, and a home. With 2 adults, 1 teen, and 1 child, this is probably maintained quite easily, with time for other chores- weaving, woodcutting, hunting, etc. They could get their entire wheat harvest plowed and planted within a week. With the garden, let us assume that the family consumes the proceeds from 4 of those acres for food, seed, and other personal uses. That leaves them 5 acres of wheat to sell at the end of the season. Now, In England in the 1720s, the average yield for wheat was 19 bushels per acre. A bushel of wheat weighed roughly 60 pounds. That means your farm family was creating 1140 pounds of wheat per acre, or 5700 pounds on their 5 acre farm. Given the D&D trade value of 1 copper per pound of wheat, that means their entire crop, for an entire year, nets them 57gold. Now, you have 9 acres for grazing. Good land management meant allowing your fertilizer factories aka cows, to graze on land recovering that year. Now, calculating the number of animals who can graze over the course of a year on a given acre can be quite challenging. See http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/livestock/418-012/418-012.html. But let’s assume the farmer has no concept of math, and just turns the animals loose on the 9 acres for the year. Following the math given in the link above, 9 acres is enough land for two 500# animals to graze on for a year. We could probably assume 1 bull, 1 cow, and 1 calf, and still make the math work. Assuming they sell the calf in the fall, that is another 10gp. We can assume that, with a baby, the milk production of the cow is being consumed by the family in butter, cheese, drink, etc. So, for the year, our farm family makes 57 gold on their wheat, and 10 gold on the calf they raised. That is less than half of what you are assuming, based on skills. The vital thing about medieval farms was the grazing rights each household had on the common land. If Joe Commoner can pasture his animals on the common waste land between villages, then he can devote all his own land to growing crops etc. Another thing that helped was the practice of holding 1 bull, 1 ram and 1 boar in common within each village. Finally, each household owed three days of labour by one man to their overlord - for this purpose, Billy would count just as much as Joe without dropping the family income by much. So (sticking as far as possible to D&D prices and round figures) Joe's yearly income might run something like this: Joe Commoner, his wife and children live on a 20 acre farm, 2 acres of which contains the house, barns, garden etc. Of the remainder, half is sown with wheat and half is left as pasture. For livestock, they graze 1 cow and 10 sheep on the common land (which are brought in for milking) and keep 5 chickens and a pig closer to home. When he has time, Billy hunts rabbits in the nearby wood. 9 acres of wheat brings in around 85gp The straw left after threshing - 40gp Hay from the pasture - 40gp From the sheep: wool - 2gp On average 1 lamb each - 20gp Cheese (from their milk) - around 176gp From the chickens: chicks - 10gp 2 doz eggs/week - 1gp From the cow: calf - 10gp Milk - around 140gp From the pig - piglets - 30gp Rabbit skins (from hunting) - 1gp TOTAL INCOME 550gp Minus: Living Expenses - 330gp Taxes - 120gp DISPOSABLE INCOME 100gp /2gp per week Taxes I think we can make some pretty good estimates about the tax burden for commoners. In a sixty-person (number chosen for easy demographic division) Thorp, we can reasonably expect to see these three individuals drawing their upkeep from other people's work: A Tax Collector (1st-level Aristocrat) A Constable (2nd-level Warrior) A Wise-woman (1st-level Adept) For take-home salaries, these folks will draw 4sp (Clerk wage), 6sp (Mercenary Leader wage) and 1gp (Alchemist wage, as a representation of the sorts of things that an Adept does in a community) per day. Now, 2gp/day doesn't seem like that much for having these folks in town, but it doesn't take into account the standard of living to which they have become accustomed - that has to be paid for in addition to their take-home wage. The Tax Collector expects a Good upkeep, for 100gp/month. The Constable, being less of a snob, will settle for Common, still requiring 45gp/month; while the Wise-woman only asks for what amounts to a poor upkeep, at 12gp/month. So, we've gone from 60gp/month to 217gp/month, to be split evenly (no progressive taxation in D&D, remember) among the other residents. According to the scenario we've had drawn up for us, the standard commoner organisation is the 4-person household (following Rome, I am not regarding infants as persons). Each of the 14 other households of the community will then have a tax burden of 15gp/month assigned to it, just to pay for the local authorities. We can also assume that the Tax Collector's boss would like to see some coin coming from the Thorpians; if the Tax Collector is in fact the Supreme Executive Authority, then he'll have to pocket more change in order to more regularly hire mercenaries/adventurers to deal with problems that a feudal army might otherwise put down. Category:Economy